Live coverage: San Diego real estate summit

UPDATE: Due to technical difficulties U-T reporter Lily Leung is having trouble updating her blog at the event. Stay tuned. She plans to bring you a full report when she returns from the conference this afternoon.

REPORTER'S NOTE: Sorry for the inconvenience; Internet connection was an issue. My update on the conference is below.

Live coverage on Wednesday

Visit the U-T's real estate blog (click here) for highlights of two key talks from 10:30 to 11:35 a.m.

The function, at the Town & Country Resort in Mission Valley, will feature Norm Miller, director of University of San Diego's real estate center, and Cynthia A. Kroll, senior regional economist at UC Berkeley's real estate and urban economics center.

Miller, a member of the U-T's Econometer panel, will give his take on several aspects of the market including the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, mortgage rates and distressed inventory.

Kroll will talk about "the fragile recovery and the implications for employment, economic growth, and the U.S. and California real estate markets," said Nicole Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Realtors' organization, which is hosting the three-year-old summit.

SUMMIT HIGHLIGHTS

Featured speaker Cynthia Kroll shared the following insights:

-The U.S. and California economic recovery has been "very uneven" and appears to be stalling. The chances of a "double-dip recession" are higher now than they were six months ago, exacerbated by concerns of the European market, as well as government finances. Unemployment remains "troublingly high."

-The commercial market is showing signs of improvement, better than the residential side. But the improvements are being seen in sales and rehabs instead of construction, which remains slow.

-Job recovery will take 5-6 years, longer than recoveries from previous recessions because the housing bubble involved "jobs that shouldn't have been there in the beginning," Kroll said, referring to lenders who facilitated toxic loans that are affecting today's market.

-Is California leading or lagging other states in the U.S. economic recovery? We're somewhere in the middle, Kroll said. We're still being kept behind because we were the center of the subprime lending boom - and eventual bust.

-Where's job growth? There's a surge in the tech sectors, but that growth is more controlled than what we saw during the dot.com bubble. Growth also is present in education and health. Businesses are employing more temp workers as they're seeing the need for more resources but still lack the confidence to commit to full-time work. The big loser in jobs is the government.

Points from Norm Miller:

On the S&P/Case-Shiller Home price index: Miller says it's misleading because the monthly report mixes regular sales with distressed ones, "bringing the average (price) down" and giving consumers a skewed, overgeneralized view of the housing market. He says there are hot spots and cool spots throughout the county, depending on inventory type.

On housing: Foreclosures have decreased but there's still troubled inventory. A lot of folks are underwater, "but that doesn't mean they're going to default."

Getting a mortgage: Underwriting standards remain stringent, hurting about 20-30 percent of home sales, he said.

Government tax credits: He said they have "destroyed our market" because you're essentially taking money from the future in order to help the present. He said they've delayed the housing recovery.